Sunday Walk

Another long beautiful walk with Eric this Sunday, beginning with brunch at our favorite diner, the Piedmont Street Cafe and Bakery, then a long stroll through St. Mary's cemetery -- the rather shaggier neighbor to the posh Mountainview Cemetery next door -- where in over a mile's exploration we encountered just a single car and one other couple the whole time, walking their beagle. Still amazed by the sublime outdoor spaces bathing in sunlight and bristling with blooms that are ignored by throngs within walking distance here in my wonderful beloved City of Oakland. Can't say exactly why but so far I am not too nervous about upcoming teaching -- tomorrow I'm introducing my critical theory survey course to Marx(isms) and then my digital anti-democratization class is going to talk about "net neutrality," so-called, and read some Zeynep Tufekci and Frank Pasquale to go with last week's Safiya Noble. I get the feeling that the digi-demos wants less lecture and more hands-on workshopping, so I'm crafting in-class exercises for them -- these don't always cover quite as much ground, but the energy they generate often seems to help students retain more of what we do manage to cover. In my grad design thinking critique seminar we're weaving environmental justice and eco-socialist critiques of "bright" greens and "natural capitalists" (so-called) and this will lead us into a discussion of geo-engineering discourse. All topics I've gone on about a million times before, in class after class (not to mention a million old blog posts here).